Alexander Pierre "A. P." Tureaud Sr. (February 26, 1899 – January 22, 1972) was an African-American attorney who headed the legal team for the

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

chapter of the NAACP during the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

. With the assistance of

Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...

and Robert Carter from the

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (NAACP LDF, the Legal Defense Fund, or LDF) is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City. LDF is wholly independent and separate from the NAACP. Altho ...

, A. P. Tureaud filed the lawsuit that successfully ended the system of Jim Crow

segregation Segregation may refer to: Separation of people * Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space * School segregation * Housing segregation * Racial segregation, separation of humans ...

in New Orleans. That case paved the way for integrating the first two elementary schools in the Deep South.

Career

Background

Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...

arose directly from a Supreme Court ruling which validated a "states' rights" notion that blacks and whites could be equally well served using

separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protec ...

public facilities. With ''

Plessy v. Ferguson ''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in qualit ...

'' (163 U.S. 537 (1896)) the United States Supreme Court confirmed the right of state legislatures to enact discriminatory legislation. With this authority, civic organizations throughout the American South moved to restrict citizen access and limit citizens from exercising their civil rights based on the basis of their social and economic status, and on their personal history as descended from a former slave.R. Bentley Anderson, ''Black, White, And Catholic: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947-1956'', October 30, 2005. .

Louis Berry Louis Berry (October 9, 1914 – May 3, 1998) was the first African American permitted to practice law in his native formerly segregated city of Alexandria in Rapides Parish in Central Louisiana. Background A son of Frank Berry Sr., a tailo ...

, the civil rights attorney from

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...

and the first African American admitted to the Louisiana bar since Tureaud himself, had hoped to join Tureaud's law firm in the late 1940s, but Tureaud could not at the time afford to take on another attorney.

Cases

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court overturned ''Plessy'' and ruled in ''

Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...

'' that segregated schools were unconstitutional and must be desegregated "with all deliberate speed." In the following years, A. P. Tureaud and the NAACP initiated the lawsuits which eventually forced the Orleans Parish School System to desegregate. Tureaud also filed suit in 1953 against the

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...

Board of Supervisors seeking desegregation on behalf of his minor son, A. P. Tureaud Jr. As a result, his son became the first black student at LSU.

Death

Tureaud died in New Orleans in 1972, roughly a month shy of what would have been his 73rd birthday.

Personal life

Tureaud was

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, a member of St Augustine Church and the

Knights of Peter Claver The Knights of Peter Claver and Ladies Auxiliary is an international Catholic fraternal service order. Founded in 1909 by the Josephites and parishioners from Most Pure Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Mobile, Alabama, it is the largest and o ...

Honors

The subject has a statue at the beginning of A.P. Tureaud Street in the 7th ward.Campbell-Rock, C.C. (15 March 2021). "New Orleans HBCU graduates in the Modern Civil Rights Movement"
Louisiana Weekly website
Retrieved 29 July 2021.

Notes

References

* Rachel Lorraine Emanuel and Denise Barkis-Richter. ''Louisiana Public Broadcasting''

* Saint Augustine Church, Fauborg Treme, New Orleans

* New Orleans Public Library System
"Notable African Americans from Louisiana."
* Donald E. Devore and Joseph Logsdon. ''Crescent City Schools'', July 1991. . Chapters VI and VII. *
A More Noble Cause: A. P. Tureaud and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Louisiana (A Personal Biography).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tureaud, A.P. 1899 births 1972 deaths African-American Catholics Lawyers from New Orleans Louisiana Republicans Louisiana Democrats Howard University alumni American civil rights lawyers Activists from Louisiana 20th-century American lawyers Knights of Peter Claver & Ladies Auxiliary 20th-century African-American people Roman Catholic activists